Wilks takes the blame for Scotland spin

Guy Wilks has accepted the blame for the high-speed spin that wrecked his dreams of winning RACMSA Rally of Scotland, the penultimate round of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge.

Wilks started stage five, Errochty, a handful of seconds adrift of leader Andreas Mikkelsen. But a mistake on a fast left-hander sent him careering into a ditch where he became stuck for several minutes.

“It was my fault,” said the 30-year-old Peugeot UK driver. “I thought we had a puncture about 500 metres from the start. For some strange reason the car was behaving a little peculiar so I had it in my head that it was a puncture but I knew that I wasn’t going to stop to change it and instead was planning to drag the car through. But it wasn’t getting any better and I pushed too hard and took one risk too many.”

He continued: “The car went broadside down the road in a fast left. The front caught a ditch and it span almost 360 degrees and got beached on the sill with the front wheels on the road and the back wheels in a ditch. It took a lot of time to get out.”

Wilks said a group of spectators helped to haul his car back onto the road.

“I thought nobody would come but five or six Swedes I think they were came along,” said Wilks, who is co-driven by fellow Briton Phil Pugh. “I had to get the jack out and put a wheel under the rear wheel to try and lift the back of the car to get the weight on the tyres because all the weight was on the sill. It just took too long and then I had to wait for about a minute to let my team-mate Thierry [Neuville] past. The car wasn’t straight, because it took a wallop on the front-right. It’s been a rubbish morning.”

Wilks has dropped to 23rd in the overall standings as a result of his delay.